Outside of Paris

In mid-April I went to Giverny to visit Monet’s house and gardens. I had been wanting to go since I heard about it last spring.

My godparents were in town visiting, and they mentioned that they wanted to go out to Giverny. So I said that I would love to come along, and we decided to make the trip out there Monday morning to beat some of the crowds. The weather was perfect, it was a high of 55 degrees Fahrenheit (about 12 degrees Celsius) with sun and no clouds but also a slight breeze. It was warm in the sun and delightfully cool in the shade. Basically, perfect.

My godparents have French cousins that joined us for our visit to Giverny, the two of them are lovely. It was nice to see them for a second time and to spend some time all together just walking around taking in the beauty of nature.

I took about a billion pictures of flowers, so many things were blooming on our mid-April trip, and it was absolutely magnificent. The riotous color combinations were glorious. And it was so nice to be outside of Paris, in nature, and enjoying the fresh air. The gardens are gorgeous; I could have stayed there all day. Too bad there is no re-entry once you leave, because I would have liked to read all afternoon in the shade surrounded by so many flowers.

There were quite a few people and I am not a fan of crowds (if you feel similarly I would advise avoiding it during high tourist season in the summer) but there were not so many people at this time of year that I was put off, it ended up being fine. It is definitely worth a visit, the water lily pond alone is stunning. I understand, given all the people, why they don’t allow reentry, I think people would stay all day if they could.

I liked it even more than I thought I would. The town has managed to stay somewhat frozen in time. It’s very picturesque. Pure touristy, but in a charming way. And wandering through the gardens you just forget about everything else.

After our visit our group had lunch together. We ate lunch outside on a terrace at a crêperie at the end of the main road, part of a lovely little hotel with a view of hills. It was in the opposite direction of the entrance to the town via bus so there were far less people and crowds, it was very calm and just a really wonderful long lunch spent with some great company.

At the bottom of this post, after the pictures, I have included some tips I picked up during our day trip to Giverny in case they might help you as well.

I did not include pictures of my traveling companions because I don’t believe in blogging the faces of those in my life; that sort of thing I reserve for facebook where we can enjoy the photos together. Weirdly enough, I will take photos of random people, but only in admiration.

If you would like to view the pictures alone, in album format on Flickr, you can find them here. And of course all pictures are copyright to me and are not to be used without my permission.